Prosperity Prophets

Even in Jeremiah's time, there were prosperity preachers! But these preachers may not have been motivated by making money or being famous but were most likely just trying to stay alive.
"Thus says the Lord of hosts: "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, 'It shall be well with you'; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, 'No disaster shall come upon you.'"
Jeremiah 23:16-17

It's astonishing how relevant this is still thousands of years later. While Jeremiah as preaching that the Lord was going to judge Israel for sin, these "prophets" were preaching the opposite, that regardless of what the people were engaging in, they were going to be fine because they were God's chosen people! I do not think it would be right to apply this text too liberally in the present as the Lord was speaking to a specific people at a time when the people were under judgment but at the same time I think it still applies that preachers who do not take into account the seriousness of our forms of sin and idolatry and exclusively preach niceties about thinking positively about yourself and not having a defeatist attitude (Osteen, etc.) are leading people astray.

It sounds like there is a bit of relativism going on in this time as well. These preachers were most likely more concerned about remaining popular with the people then confronting people's sin (which makes sense since prophets were getting sawed in half!). I wonder under these circumstances if I would have the courage to speak what the Lord had given me to say or if I would flee from conflict (which I have a tendency to do).

It's easy to rip on these prophets who were preaching prosperity, but before I do that I want to make sure that I wouldn't have done the same thing if I were faced with a people who were ready to kill me just for preaching what God had said. What are the current day preachers excuse for preaching what the people want to hear (in form of health and wealth)?

Is it spring yet?

In light of the incredibly dreary weather for the last (what has it been, three months?), I've been brimming with excitement for what this spring holds. First, at the end of February I will be soaking up the sun in San Diego for a week (at a pastor's convention). In April, I get to spend a weekend with my good friends from high school on account of my friend Josh Carr getting married and honestly, most of the weekend we will probably act like we are in high school again and I'm ok with that. Finally, after the wedding I get to head up to Chicago and see some good friends from college for a few days. It's been a long time since I've been able to spend significant time with all of these friends. Plus, when I leave for Illinois on April 23rd, it will mark the end of my Hebrew studies which will be a reward in itself! And then if that is not enough there is a good reason to believe (God-willing) that we will be starting another "site" of Evergreen back in SE Portland where I will be preaching on a regular basis which is something I've been preparing to do for a long, long time. 2008 is going to be a good year and this spring is just the beginning of the great things to come. And think, I didn't even have to make any new years resolutions for all this to happen!

Who's that young couple?

While we're posting old pictures, I couldn't help but post this gem. Who's that handsome man?

Boot & Spur Magazine

Yeah, that's Devin Vaughn alright. And you're looking at a fourth place prize pic right there for Boot & Spur magazine which I can't say I have heard of before today but that's a pretty sweet pic.

New Tax Deal, and other facts you need to know now!

I don't know if this is good for our economy or not, (because I know relatively little about economics) but we could always use an extra 1200 dollar lying around! Yeah! Go government!

In other news, Chris shared a great Onion article with me today. Well worth the read.

In even more news, I am skipping Hebrew today and couldn't feel better about it. The first 5 weeks of this semester are a drag. We're going over weak verb patterns that we only need to "be familiar with" and it's just getting kind of tedious. I'm actually enjoying some aspects of Hebrew now that I can actually read the text and translate it with some proficiency. I'm excited for the second half of the semester which will just be all exegesis and no more grammar! woohoo!

Fourthly, I just finished reading the book "Consuming Jesus" by Paul Metzger (prof at Multnomah Seminary) and am working on a review for February's Next Wave. I've got to say that I was really convicted in this book at a personal level and have been thinking of how we function as a church and why that may hinder racial reconciliation and diversity within the larger body. The consumer church (and church growth specialists) have made niche groups and homogeneous marketing a virtue rather than clearly the antithesis of Jesus' prayer for unity and Paul's theological recognition that the "dividing wall of hostility" has been torn down. I highly recommend this book. I am going to be thinking about this a lot. I would love to see some ways that our church could partner with other, especially other cultural churches in Portland. I think we could both learn so much from each other and model reconciliation in a large way for the city of Portland.

One great idea in the book was a "reverse mission trip" where the money that is typically raised for people out of our church community to go, gets sent to the place where we would have went for the purpose of paying the pastors salary for the year or to build something and to pay for the travel of some of those in the church from this place to come to us and teach and minister to us for a week. I've got to say that this is a fascinating idea and one I've never even thought of.

And finally, and a lot less important, a few guys and I are going to brew a nut brown ale tomorrow morning so we're excited about that. Here's the recipe we are using for those of you who are down with beer brewing:

1 lb. Crystal malt (120L)
1 lb. Munich Malt
2 oz. Chocolate Malt
1-1/2 oz. Perle Hops
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops
1/2 oz. Mt. Hood Hops
#1028 London Ale Yeast
6 lbs. Amber liquid extract
1 lb. Alexander dark
28 oz. Brown candi sugar

I just realized while copying this over that I bought too much chocolate grain and I will have quite a few extra hops which would necessitate another brew (maybe a porter), but i'm not sure how long hops last in the fridge. Anyone? (no, they're not pellets). We're probably going to need a name for this brew. Any ideas?

Christian Music

I haven't done a list in a while which is a good thing because I went a little nutso for a while over Christmas but we were talking last night with some friends and we started talking about Christian music that we listened to in High School and it brought back an entirely different world in which I used to live and I thought it would be a complete disservice to you and myself if I did not post a list of the best High School Christian Album's (now keep in mind, this is for people who lived during the explosion of Christian rock right around 1996-2000). About the second year in College I started to listen to good music again, so keep in mind this is about a four year window here.

Plankeye - Commonwealth
My favorite album of the Christian rock scene.












Jars of Clay - Jars of Clay













Third Day - Third Day













Caedmon's Call - Caedmon's Call













Five Iron Frenzy - Our Newest Album Ever
Reese Roper is my hero (plus who couldn't love Jeff the girl?)













Seven Day Jesus - Seven Day Jesus
What's the deal with Christian artists and self-titled records?












Switchfoot - The Legend of Chin
Still a good cd today.












Bleach - Space
Who would have thought Kentucky Christian College could produce these guys? Unfortunately they should have retired about 10 years ago.











Newsboys - Take Me To Your Leader
The song "Lost the Plot" is still awesome.












The Supertones - Adventures of....
The whole ska thing is a little embarrassing now, but tell me you didn't skank at the show?












Audio Adrenaline - Bloom
There's still no one cooler than Will.












D.C. Talk - Jesus Freak
Let's be honest, this one started it all for Christian rock for high schoolers.











So who am I missing here???

Paparazzi for hire

Huh?

Would you like Playguard?

Today the Oregonian posted a story about the utterly ridiculous "Playguard" which was the 25 cent damage waiver that Hollywood Video managers (especially certain district managers) would hold a gun to your head to pitch to every customer regardless of the fact that NO ONE wanted it and NO ONE needs it by pitching to the customer that a percentage gets donated to the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation (which none of us employees had any idea how much of the quarter got donated, nor what this foundation was or did.) I was happy to see the Oregonian pick this up and I hope Hollywood Video will discontinue these mostly unethical practices seeing that only 2.5 cents of any quarter went to the foundation (which I did not know when i worked there). I was under the impression that it was the entire amount. Not only were we not told, but the fact is that everyday I had to step into work knowing that I was going to be taken back to the office and berated over not selling enough playguards. I'm serious, every single day I would get "the talk". And if that wasn't bad enough, the district manager would have whoever was on duty leave him a message at night reporting what percentage of people we had sold Playguard to and if we did not sell a certain percentage then we would have to explain what actions we were going to take to sell more of this obvious scam.

Hollywood Video, I can say this with ease, was one of the more unethical places I have ever worked and I dreaded every day I had to go in. I am glad that this period of my life is over and still feel sorry for those who still have to work under those bottom-line driven policies. (I haven't even got into the fact that we had a quota on candy/soda sales, used DVD sales, etc.) You know what Hollywood Video, most of the time, people just want to rent a video which you already overcharge for, do we really have to ask every person if they want playguard, snacks or drinks, used DVD's, etc? Do we have to try to sell them the entire store?

Vick

When we left Florida to move to Portland, on our drive out, Kelli and I stopped to see a friend of hers from High School who is in a prison camp at Leavenworth, KS and chatted with him for an hour of so. He calls about once a month to talk and we've exchanged letters with him and such.

Well, Kelli got a call from him tonight and it turns out that his new prison mate is none other than Michael Vick! No joke. There are not many guys in this minimum security camp (the picture in this article, by the way is the picture of the maximum security prison, not the minimum security camp which doesn't even have real fences or gates, you could just walk on out if you wanted to, but no one would since the guys in there have short sentences and don't want to get in more trouble) so it must have been exciting.

Kelli asked if it was crazy having him there and he said that it was kind of exciting for the first few days but now he's just like anyone else. He works in the kitchen and watches football with the guys. Our friend has gotten a chance to talk to him a few times because as he said, "we're both into football." That may be an understatement. He also said that since Vick entered the same drug program that is getting him out early, Vick will be out by November. Not bad considering it's a 23 month sentence!

Wow. I need to send him something to get signed for me! I can't believe that.

Does anyone have any messages they want me to relay to Michael via our friend?

A few new music recommends

The new Drive-By Truckers is great...



Also, check out Doug Burr and his song "Thing About Trouble" Really great stuff.

Jon Foreman (the frontman of Switchfoot) has an EP out. It's not bad. Here is "The Cure for Pain"

Finally, Nada Surf has a new record "Lucky". Here is an mp3 of See These Bones.

Family Guy

I love Family Guy. This spoof of One Tree Hill was on last night. Here is a thirty second clip of it. Hilarious.

Pain

Pain has a certain way of waking you up from the monotonous routine of life. I hate pain, but I am beginning to see its value. Obviously, no one appreciates pain at the time, but the effects of pain can be positive and long-lasting.

Personally, I've experienced quite a bit of pain in 2007. It's been a tough year. I've dealt with (and am still coming to grips with) the emotional pain of the loss of a young friend whose life seemed to end way too soon. And the loss of another family friend to an unexplained and still semi-puzzling suicide. In the last 10 weeks I've also dealt with some of the most painful pain I have experienced in my shoulder and back. It felt like there was a raging fire destroying everything inside and it only took three injections, a ridiculous amount of Ibuprofen and Vicadin to get over. And then of course, to cap the year off I got the stomach flu one day before I was to preach at Evergreen and fly for 6 hours back to the Midwest for Christmas break.

Somewhere in the midst of that I felt a certain depression, not quite despair but I did start to feel sorry for myself. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the pain, especially the five nights in a row I could not sleep because of it. In the middle of one night of sleepless wonder I expressed my anger with God and anger at the problem of pain and my unawareness of its usefulness to life.

Looking back over the last year and the pain that it brought I am started to understand a few things. The first is that life is really great without pain. There really is something to "the most important thing is that you have your health" as Kelli has stated. There really is nothing quite like it. There is nothing like pain or sickness to wake you up to that reality.

The second thing I have been pondering is that the experience of pain really makes you grateful to every day that you do not experience pain. Life is more enjoyable than ever! I am happy to be alive remembering that we are not promised a pain free existence, nor even tomorrow. My perspective has not necessarily been changed, but sharpened and for that I am grateful to God. Unfortunately, this is something that we tend to forget way to quickly as we begin the day to day routines that we get stuck in.

And third, like I said above, pain wakes you up to the fact that many things in life are not nearly as important as we make them. You start saying to yourself, especially when you are sick, once I get healthy again, I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to eat better, take better care of myself, get healthy. I'm going to focus on the more important things in life and forget the triviality. We all need a wakeup call like this, usually about once a year, some of us more frequently! At the time, there is nothing more horrible than hurling, no doubt about that, but once health has sprung upon us again, life has never seemed so good. Thank you God for the reminder of how valuable life and health is, may we not waste the blessing of health while we still have it and may we never take it for granted.

Bears Pub Couch

I don't know what is more disturbing; that this exists, or that there are only three left in stock.

Christian James Vollstedt

Congratulations to John and Taryn, our good friends in Tampa, FL who just had a little baby boy! He was born at 12:51pm on Sunday, January 6th and was 7 lbs - 1o ounces and 21 inches long.

One thing is for certain, this kid is going to grow up a gamer. He will be playing pinochle by the time he's three! I also wonder how long before they start dressing him in Florida St. attire.

Congrats!

Christmas Vacation

We just got back from our 9 day excursion to visit family in Illinois yesterday. We started out by flying into Nashville to visit my mother, sister, and my niece and nephew as you can see here. We had a great time.

I got sick the day before we were supposed to leave for Nashville and was terrified we wouldn't be able to make it. Not only that, but I was supposed to preach Sunday morning which I was unable to do. Ironically, the week before, Bob was up to preach but got sick and called me at 6:30 in the morning on Sunday to inform me that I would be preaching. Well, I guess the "universe" has a way of evening things out. Plus, I'll have a good sermon for the last week of December next year to preach.

It was fantastic to get to spend some time with the twins. They are a lot of fun at this age and I'm bummed I don't get to see them more often.










We visited the Opryland Hotel while we were in Nashville and it was pretty impressive, it was like it's own little world inside their dome.

After this we spent a day with my sister Molly, my Dad, and then went to Marshall to spend the next four days with Kelli's parents and got to do three very important things:

1. See our other nieces, Savannah and Gabrielle
2. Watch American Gladiators.
3. Play Nintendo Wii for the first time (it was so freaking cool)

We arrived back in Portland yesterday and we are happy to be home. I loved our time away as I always do but it seemed like we were away for a long time. I was anxious to get back and start school again. I feel refreshed and ready for a new year! I have a good feeling about 2008! I really think it's going to be a great year. Only a few more months and it's Spring! (which means spring training and a new year for the Cubs).